"Seb, I-- Wait. What? I can't... WHAT DID YOU SAY!?"

The grin was quickly wiped from Brooklyn's face and replaced with a sneer of mortified fury. She stepped up the hurt she had been giving the ghouls. It was hard enough to keep track of them all and keep them off the group as they made a break for it. Now she was faced with a salacious series of vivid mental images involving the two of them that simply would not stop. She tried to push them down but they stayed right there on the edge of her mind. She felt the heat in her cheeks and had to ignore that now too.

"Sebastian, please... Please, please just shut your mouth," she growled at him while clipping through the corner of the old police station.

Though she could have made it to the lift by now, she stayed close to the group. Her radar kept an eye on their movements and six while she stayed just ahead to clear the way and scare up any hiding ghouls. If she acted fast she usually had success in mowing most of them over before they reached her friends. The small handful that broke through were never more than Sebastian, Gabe and the robot she saw running around with them, could handle. Violent explosions and blasts seemed to only draw more out, but there had to be some end to them she thought. Again she fired up the laser in the tail and took down another wave of them, wiping out the supports on a three story building and collapsing it on even more while she was at it. Underneath and around her the machine groaned and shuddered.

"I can keep this up all day," she chuckled.

Then a red warning light came on and beeped low. Coolant levels low.

"Oh. Maybe not," she mumbled. She had no idea the age of this thing and hadn't even thought about things like that. The coolant probably wasn't the only fluid that needed to be filled up. As soon as she realized this several more warning lights came on about that exact problem. Oil, differentials, transfer cases, flywheels... they were all bone dry. But they were making good progress and the lift wasn't far. Maybe a few more miles at most. She could make it a few more miles before any sort of breakdown. More of the monsters rushed from a hole that had been punched in a subsystem when the building fell. Again she charged up the guns and blasted them. The low beeping became a full on alarm. She checked through all the readings as the legs of the mech started to grind and screech with every movement. She could feel the jarring and slips and disconnections not just in the cockpit but in her body as well as the malfunctions tortured her nervous system. The pain was coming to a level that made it difficult to concentrate even with the adrenaline flowing in her veins. The temperatures of the weapons systems and the engines were reaching dangerous levels.

"That's not good," Brooklyn whimpered, "I may have a problem. We're gonna need to ditch this thing soon," she couldn't believe she was saying that about her baby. More ghouls piled on the scorpion and began tearing and clawing at anything they could reach, but aside from a few minor parts the armor kept them from doing any real damage. Another charge was getting close. Several more times she fired into them and then completely rolled the mech over to crush any that were on it. A dust cloud kicked up around her and the machine screamed almost as if in pain, but it did the trick. The alarms continued to go off and she kept a close eye on the temperatures. DT started advising her to stop.

"I think I've got a little more in her," Brooklyn nodded and winced, "Just a little more then we'll stop."

Once back up on its legs she wheeled around to fire at a few ghouls who were racing toward the group and charged the main guns again. [i]BOOM![/i] One ball of charged plasma ripped them apart. The mech shook as a shock wave tore through it, listed over and swayed back into standing position. A plume of fire and black smoke billowed from the arm where one of the cannons used to be. Now a smoldering mess of charred steel. The alarms doubled and the entire cockpit flashed red. Catastrophic failure. Brooklyn screamed in agony as the mech further informed her of this by shooting a blinding pain up her right arm which convulsed for several seconds before the signals let up.

"Th-that's the end of that," she gasped starting to disengage the combat protocols entirely in an effort to cool down the systems before they went into full melt down, "Cover me. I'm getting the hell out of this thing."

One of the engines on the left side started to rattle the entire scorpion so badly she could barely read the displays. Then a second explosion rocked her as it jammed and erupted. This time the machine collapsed on its side. Then the message she didn't want to see came up. Meltdown. Frantically she tried to get the piloting systems to disengage her and open up the loading ramp. Error. Again she ran the commands through. The electrodes and their little needles that dug into her skin ripped out of the finger tips and palm of her right hand. But only her right hand. Error. Immediately she used it to start trying to by-pass the system manually.

"Come on, come on. Please," she breathed. A loud hiss and chunk sounded behind her as the loading ramp started to drop. "Yes!" She started trying to yank the other electrodes out by hand. The first one to come out of her index finger hurt all the way up her arm and into her chest with an intensity that made her eyes water. The second engine melted down and blasted itself into oblivion. Smoke started to pour in from the floor and instruments. But there was a bigger problem. A horrible grinding noise replaced the hum of the ramp dropping. It stopped completely. Jammed in place.

"Oh shit."